‘Dark commerce’ backlash grows in cities across Europe

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PARIS — The pandemic-era hunger for fast delivery — of necessities like groceries and luxuries like take-out — has become a massive political headache in cities across Europe.

That’s because fast delivery times rely on so-called “dark” commerce — the storehouses and kitchens from which delivery riders buzz in and out to pick up and deliver goods.

While they’re crucial to quick commerce start-ups and good for employment figures, they are also a nuisance to the immediate neighborhood. Residents complain about noisy scooters and dangerous driving as workers race to meet tight delivery deadlines.

In the Spanish city of Segovia, public pressure lead to the arrest of four drivers found to have been driving without licenses or riding their scooters on sidewalks and other pedestrianized areas while delivering food.

Richard (who did not want to give his full name), the manager of a bowling alley in the Parisian suburb of Courbevoie, said a dark kitchen on his street is a “disgusting” nuisance for his clients. “They put all their food waste and oil straight in the regular trash. It all leaks out into the street.”

Whether these establishments survive depends on how governments designate and therefore regulate them.

That’s very much a live debate in France, where a leaked draft government decree that appeared to designate all locations with a click-and-collect counter as retail rather than wholesale sparked national outrage. Doing so would, according to Deputy Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire, “de facto legalize” dark stores on a national level.

The mayors of Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Paris and other cities have demanded regulatory tools for cities to crack down on all dark stores and kitchens, not just those without click-and-collect counters.

A spokesperson for Secretary of Commerce Olivia Grégoire insisted “the only aim of this decree” was to legally define dark stores, “despite the false information that was spread by the city of Paris.”

The government has since promised that towns and cities will have the ability to regulate dark stores as they see fit. It also launched a consultation on the decree, with a first meeting with “all concerned parties” scheduled for September 6.

All around Europe

Most cities aren’t keen to wait for consultations, saying the disruptive trend needs to be brought under control more quickly.

In Amsterdam, the borough West got ahead of the city council late last year by investigating whether dark stores fit development plans, ruling that some didn’t and retracting the permit of at least one. A new city-wide plan set for January could limit dark stores to industry zones.

“We noticed fairly quickly that they took over places where this was not really convenient, and where you could see trouble emerge quickly,” Melanie van der Horst, a member of the borough’s executive committee, said earlier this year. “There are the trucks driving into the street, also at night, unloading at inconvenient moments, parked on the bikeway. There are the couriers waiting, not inside, but in the public space, until late at night. They leave their trash, they urinate, drugs are used.”

Madrid has already taken action too. In June last year, the city council updated its zoning regulations for the first time in 20 years, limiting the size of dark kitchens to 350 square meters and banning them from having more than eight active stoves.

The shops are also obliged to have indoor staging areas where delivery riders can wait, to stop the workers from loitering on residential streets.

Paris isn’t hanging around for the government to make up its mind: 45 dark stores have now been ordered to close in areas where warehouses are forbidden and 43 others will receive fines “at the start of September” — €500 a day up to a maximum of €25,000 per location — until they declare themselves warehouses.

Dark stores aren’t likely to pay up, according to Deputy Mayor Grégoire, because doing so would set a precedent that could be replicated elsewhere.

But even as officials struggle to tackle the problem, some say they’re whacking a mole that’s already ducked.

Europe’s middle class has moved out of the pandemic mindset and is ordering less, while private funding markets are nervous about an impending recession. With tech investment down compared to last year, the ultrafast grocery market is likely to seek to consolidate instead of pursuing more growth.

Gorillas, one of the earliest movers in the market, has laid off half the staff at its headquarters in Berlin and is pulling out of Spain, Italy, Belgium and Denmark.

That could play into the hands of more established players or retailers that already have a brick-and-mortar network. U.K.-based Deliveroo, for example, relies on proven retailers, like Waitrose or Morrisons — which don’t rely on dark stores.

Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.

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